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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Coming to my senses',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/12/08.jpg" alt="Fog along the road" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		There have been no discussion posts on the university boards this week besides my own, so there&apos;s nothing to respond to today.
		That makes today&apos;s journal entry uncensored.
		Sadly, I don&apos;t have much to say today, but I guess I&apos;ll try to make use of this entry by saying <strong>*something*</strong>
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;m coming to my senses again.
		Theist arguments don&apos;t make much sense, but after hearing them, they sort of leave doubt in your mind a bit, as any argument would.
		And they linger.
		There&apos;s always the &quot;what if&quot;s.
		I was pointed in the direction of some atheist media though, and good atheist media tends to put things back into perspective.
	</p>
	<p>
		If there is a one true god, why would he or she permit so many wrong religions?
		At most, only one religion can be correct, right?
		Yet anyone that doesn&apos;t guess the correct religion goes off to be tortured for eternity?
		Or sent to utter oblivion?
		What kind of kind, loving, all-knowing, all-powerful god would do that?
		Yet that&apos;s the god presented my most religions.
		Believe in me without evidence or you will pay for eternity.
		Not all religions, mind you. Some gods will send you to a happy place if you&apos;re a non-believer, but a less happy place than if you were stupid enough to believe.
		I&apos;ve made this point countless times, but it&apos;s great to hear someone else make it.
	</p>
	<p>
		One video in particular got to me.
		Yahweh himself sends an atheist off to paradise, then berates a Christian and a Muslim for their beliefs and their cowardice.
		He explains how their religions depict him as a monster.
		These people believe Yahweh to be a monster and they don&apos;t even realise it.
		He supposedly casts people into hell for eternal torture, yet is an all-loving god?
		What part of love involves sending people to eternal torture?
		And the warship?
		Warship me or you&apos;ll face that eternal torture yourself.
		So those two worshipped.
		But does a terrible god like that deserve their praise?
		They ask what choice they had, so Yahweh basically tells them they could have a backbone and stand against such a god, regardless of the consequences.
		The term &quot;god-fearing&quot; had even been coined because of the ever-present fear of the creator, and this term was supposed to be a good thing.
		But why would an all-powerful and benevolent god want to instil fear in the world?
		And what would such a god want with constant, unwavering praise?
		A some point, he asks if he&apos;s supposed to be offended that the atheist doesn&apos;t know he exists.
		The theists aren&apos;t really sure, so he tells them that until they&apos;d met a few moments ago, the atheist was also unaware that these two specific theists existed.
		Were they offended by this?
		Yet the theists did believe Yahweh exists, and they believed him to be a monster that sends people to eternal torture.
		Which is more offensive, non-belief or belief that he&apos;s so terrible?
		He said he can form a relationship with the atheist, but he couldn&apos;t with the theists.
		They can be on even footing.
		They can be friends.
		He finally starts berating the theists pretty badly, saying there&apos;s nothing he can do with them and that they&apos;ve been irreparably damaged by their beliefs.
		It&apos;s clear at this point that he has no intention of sending them to hell or anything, but he seems to want nothing to do with them either.
		Like he&apos;ll send them somewhere good and happy, but they won&apos;t get a relationship with their creator.
		They finally stand up to him, and tell him they&apos;re not damaged and that they&apos;re not afraid of him.
		He smiles a bit and says that now they&apos;re getting somewhere, and the video ends.
	</p>
	<p>
		There were also explaining how if heaven strips away your &quot;sins&quot; and makes you perfect, you&apos;re not you any more.
		Going anywhere but heaven would be better than going to heaven, as you wouldn&apos;t lose yourself.
		I&apos;ve made that argument before, of course, but theists don&apos;t seem to get it.
		They think you can be &quot;perfected&quot; and still be you.
		Well, perhaps not <strong>*all*</strong> theists think that, but a great many seem to.
		I&apos;m glad to know I&apos;m not the only one with a healthy understanding of what the self includes, and that one can&apos;t be modified and still be oneself.
	</p>
	<p>
		If there is a god or gods, what does/do he/she/they want from us?
		If they&apos;re worthy of our love, they don&apos;t want constant praise and they&apos;re not going to destroy us or send us off for eternal torture.
		Believer or non-believer, it won&apos;t make a difference.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Diet</h2>
	<p>
		A friend from $a[EUGLUG] recommended the keto diet to me.
		They made it sound great.
		Like, the food would be horrible.
		They were pulling it off and enjoying it, but I&apos;d pretty much have to give up everything I love.
		Much of what I enjoy has carbs, so switching to fats and cutting out all carbs would be painful.
		Even the stuff I enjoy with a lot of fat <strong>*also*</strong> has a lot of carbs.
		I had to cut that stuff out of my diet already, but after giving up even more, I wouldn&apos;t be able to bring those things back.
		But while the food would be insufferable, the results would supposedly be fantastic.
	</p>
	<p>
		I did some research though, and the keto diet seems risky.
		There&apos;s a lot of side effects, such as an inability to properly absorb calcium.
		This particular side effect has at least two implications.
		First, you&apos;re likely to get bone deficiencies.
		And second, your urine ends up calcified, often resulting in kidney stones.
		Kidney stones would be agonizingly painful, but I think I could put up with them if it meant getting thin.
		But bone deficiencies?
		That really doesn&apos;t sound like a good idea.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve been going back and forth about whether or not to try the diet.
		The lynchpin in the argument against came today at work though.
		I mentioned to a workmate that I was considering a risky diet.
		I didn&apos;t mention what the risks were or anything about what the diet was.
		On the first try, they correctly guessed that it was the keto diet.
		The keto diet must be one of the diets well-known not to be safe.
		I don&apos;t follow the trends, so this sort of thing tends to slip under my $a[radar], but it looks like those around me know this is a bad idea.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="boss">
	<h2>The boss</h2>
	<p>
		The head manager wanted to switch shifts with someone so they could get out of work early.
		The person they wanted to switch with went along with it, then the remaining shift leader sent me home early while the head manager was still there.
		I was cool with it, and wanted to leave anyway, but I did comment on how silly it was.
		Why was I going home when I was scheduled to close?
		Why was the other person now closing for the head manager?
		If I was to be sent home early, I could instead take the head manager&apos;s shift, and the other person would get off at their scheduled time.
		They at first tried to claim that I couldn&apos;t take the head manager&apos;s shift because I was closing already, so I couldn&apos;t take a simultaneous closing shift.
		I had to walk them through how I wasn&apos;t closing though, as I got sent home.
		They could have sent the person technically taking the end of the head manager&apos;s shift home as they&apos;d done me, but instead of messing with the schedules more, they&apos;d be setting the schedules back to normal.
	</p>
	<p>
		It turns out they were trying to play some sort of game with the head manager&apos;s schedule though, and that was the easiest way to do that with him still there.
		They wanted to send the head manager away.
		They don&apos;t like working with them.
		There&apos;s a lot of us that don&apos;t like working with them.
		I guess those with a little bit of authority actually act on that a bit, and jump through odd hoops to get rid of them.
		I&apos;m glad I&apos;m not the only one that dislikes them.
		I&apos;m late to the party though.
		People have been telling me how bad they are for years, and I didn&apos;t really buy into it.
		I guess my self-respect has grown, and I expect more out of my bosses.
		I expect them to actually treat me like a human being.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
